Penfold

Penfold

“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.” ― Frida Kahlo

176
Writings
92
Followers
90
Following
Watertight

Sitting in her room, she was trying to work out what she had done wrong. ‘Again?’, she quietly wondered, ‘How could it be happening again?

It was like being in a glass box, the water was slowly pouring in. There was no way out and the end felt inevitable.


But if you could change one thing from the past, would it work, would it help you out of the mess you’d gotten yourself into? And what would y...

Amantine

It was a small thing, really

In the cafe,

Hardly hearing me.


I held out a feather, soft

Not really useful, 

But holding it up.


Whether you took it or not

Is by the by. 


What mattered was the difference

Between true and lie.


To ourselves, to each other

We know the answers,

Aren’t willing to believe them.


We know the timing isn’t perfect

Yet we stop at the meaning, 

We see it, congealing.


I st...

Monody

A single line, that’s all it was, written on the page like it was a hastily scrawled note to a partner, when you’d say something like ‘Just gone out to the shops’.


However, this was something that had been told to me in confidence, and it was a line so singularly odd that I had written it down, and then carelessly left it on a table in the café. 


I never normally do this, I treat my client note...

Thee

It was like I’d forgotten /

All those times you were nice to me.

You’d hold my hand

You’d ask how I was

You’d smile and say,

I was an angel. 


And then I remembered /

All those times my mind was elsewhere.

How he’d kissed me

How he’d whispered 

How he’d pause the now,

But I’d be regret.


Love, it’s impossible /

We can’t hold onto love squandered.

Me wanting to keep

Me hoping I’d see

Me hoping I’d ...

Sunrise, a castle on a bay

It's like the sun can’t quite break through, the hills are too steep, the branches tangled up, and the light is caught between the cusp. Betwixt the night and day, light is matted, woven together by absence or by presence, and it’s the feeling of what might be in those negative spaces, it’s comforting, but also it’s haunting.


The castle like a ghostly ship - my mind wanders, but what of it? Is it...

Arch

I do belong to you, she said.

Her hands slipping clay, 

Brow furrowed

Instead.


Each carve through her fingers.

He watched and dismayed,

Bespoke yet unreal

Virtuosity.


The smell of earth, ware, and fire.

Revolving on a wheel,

It’s art; It’s desire 

Speaking.


The lie lay like a baking pot

Between hearth and iron

She wasn’t his at all,

Lion.


—-


“If this is not a self-portrait it is because when ...

Do You?

What did you do?

Laid it bare on the table

One thought gone

The timing, a label.


And I paused -

What did you do?

It was noon though

Sky seemed so, so.


It creased into being

Like so many scars

What did you do?

Again, then I said - 


I did it. I did do. 

I had to - but did you?...

Shaking

Alone on a table is a salt cellar. The glass glints in the sunlight, just a little, light dancing captures in its folds, and a faint rainbow appears.


Each grain of salt is a dried out tear, a million or more closeted inside, lost by those who have realised time is short; time is lean.


Pick up that cellar and shake it, shake it clean, release the sadness of us all, release us from the fear we liv...

Time Fire

Don’t be scared. We don’t know what happens next.


We think of time as linear, as that is what we have been taught to do, but it’s no more or less true than other ways of constructing reality.


Take fire, when you think of it, what do you see? A tulip shaped flame, lifting upwards, its yellow, its orange, but you look closer, and then you see blue. Do you believe that this is true?


Without the pu...

The Fly

What does grief sound like? To me it’s like a ticking, a wind-up clock, or water falling, crashing against the rocks. It’s the low noise, against your ears, a constant hum, the same as the feeling of being shut in this box.


I’m cold. My toes are numb and so still, I don’t think I can move them even if there was space to. An eerie sound raises my heartbeat up like a crescendo, is the buzz in my h...